


living

by delinquentpanda



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, after miranda's death, before show ending, sorta - Freeform, vague timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-08-13
Packaged: 2020-08-20 14:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20229556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delinquentpanda/pseuds/delinquentpanda
Summary: James Flint's conviction and guilt





	living

**Author's Note:**

> been sitting in my drive for a minute, no hot takes just trying to capture a feeling

There's so many things missing in his life, in all their lives, it makes James wonder if this is living at all. It makes him hear echoes of Miranda's voice, telling him there is no love here. It makes him see the shocked anger on her face as she falls bonelessly to the floor. It makes him regret the day he took up the name Flint, the day they left England without a fight, the day they looked to Peter Ashe and saw an ally, the day he looked upon Lord Thomas Hamilton and saw a visionary. And that hurts worst of all, truly, that which makes his eyes sting and heart ache: the fact that he could _ regret _ and be _ ashamed _ of his love, that he has been placed into a world where loving Thomas could be seen as anything but holy and good and _ pure_.

So, in those moments of weakness, where the impotent anger and sorrow and absolute misery gather upon his shoulders and weigh him down until he can hardly close his eyes without seeing all the missteps and mistakes, James grabs ahold of distant laughter, of golden and soft-edged mornings, and clings with all his might. He rages against the thought that everything he has been through was for nothing, that everything he has ever done in the name of Thomas, of Miranda, has been anything but justice. In the dead of night, when he lays awake and haunted, James rejects the urge to jump ship and disappear as violently as he is able and, instead, gathers his maps about him and plans and plans and _ plans _ until his eyes droop unwillingly and everything is cast in a hazy grey.

There will be no peace for him, no rest, until he has taken as much from England as it has taken from him.

Impossible, he knows in his heart of hearts, impractical, absurd, unrealistic, outright ludicrous in the sheer magnitude of its idiocy, and yet…

And yet he persists.

There cannot be something that exists solely to take and face no retribution, is what he tells himself.

(There cannot be joy in my life if it does not come from Thomas and Miranda, is what he hears, echoing and mangled, like it was called into a deep, cavernous well. The sound grows louder and louder as the months drag by, the deafening waves crashing against his eardrums endlessly.)


End file.
